Runaway

Prologue

I can hear it.

Downstairs. The sounds of my parents fighting. The way they did every night. The way they had done every night for the past sixteen years. Maybe longer. I wouldn't know. I'd only been here for sixteen years, they'd been married for twenty.

It feels like a lot longer.

I hear the sound of their tongues stabbing at each other every night. Every word can draw blood, and provokes the other. It's a competition - a competition to see who can have the last word, to see who can inflict the most pain, to see who can win this war.

Every night is a different battle. I'd taken to keeping score. I don't know why. I don't have anything else to do. But the scores are pretty much even.

I should be out with friends, or at least texting them, but I don't have any. Of course I wouldn't, though. With my parents fighting, I couldn't invite anyone over if I wanted to. But they give me anxiety. Which gives me depression - I'm pretty sure I'm bipolar. And they take it out on me. Every day when I hear the sound of their feet hitting the stairs as they charge upstairs, they could either be going to bed, or coming to take their feelings out on me.

Luckily for me, it is usually the former.

The best thing I could ever do was stay out of sight, as if they catch a glimpse at me, I've done something wrong, or I don't look right, or I'm a disappointment.

I hate them.

I want to leave, but I have nowhere to go.

I hate them.